Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Where is MSN going?

Jeff Bezos frequently says that he wants Amazon "to be the place to find, discover, and buy anything you want online."

The head of MSN says that he wants MSN to be the place where customers can "find, discover and experience whatever they want online."

I normally take vision statements as the garbage they usually are, but I find this parallel to be intriguing. The focus on "discovery" is particular interesting. Personalization, particularly Amazon.com-style personalization, seems to be a major focus for MSN.

1 comment:

It seems as if consumers are the only ones not excited by personalization (which might be called 'automated customization'!).

However end-users do understand on-the-fly customization approaches (such as Vivisimo's keyword clustering of query results) which leave the power in their hands. It's a pity that a company like Vivisimo is not committed to generalized web searching.

It's an important point that Amazon.com's product suggestions are merely one aspect of the user experience and interface; users can simply choose to ignore the suggestions.